


The Rules (Tis Them)

by Ravenmaster



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: First Kiss, Insecure Wade, Jealousy, M/M, Mentions of canon typical violence, Mutual Pining, Pining, Prompt Fill, Rooftop cuddles, Truth or Dare, but nothing happens to the main characters, just some fluffy short romcom shit you guys its just happy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 23:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15011600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenmaster/pseuds/Ravenmaster
Summary: Prompt: hopelessly pining peter (like high school crush style without the high school because high school aus r boring)Peter pines over Wade (and isn't in high school). That's the story.





	The Rules (Tis Them)

**Author's Note:**

> So this one is dedicated to anon, who requested a pining story. I don't know if this is quite up to the level of high school pining, but I hope it's nice anyway!
> 
> Please let me know if you liked it, I love hearing from you guys! <3

Nothing ever snuck up on Peter, not since the bite, anyway, but this completely had.

It had been just a normal patrol night, with Wade at his side, babbling away, when his babbling had been cut short by some loose sidewalk tile that he tripped over - and Peter catching him before he could face plant into the concrete.

And as Wade slowly straightened himself up again, saying something along the lines of “oh my God, my _hero_ , kiss me,” the stupidest, most ridiculous thought occured to Peter:

_If only you meant that._

See, he had been working with Wade for… what, six months now? And he had a feeling that he knew him pretty well at this point. Well enough to call them close, at the very least. Very good friends. Maybe even best friends, tied with Ned - but in a whole different way.

Or actually, maybe it wasn’t so much that he knew him well, it was just that he liked him. His knowledge on him was pretty random, at best.

On the evening of The Realisation, he even made an effort of taking out a his Chem notebook and scribbling down all things that he knew for sure about him:

1\. Wade was pretty much immortal, but “in the sucky way”, in his own words, because he still died (“and frequently too!”) and it still hurt when he did;  
2\. He was in very good shape;  
3\. He hated boiled vegetables, but really _any_ kind of boiled vegetable, all of them, it was all gross to him;  
4\. He was taller than Peter, but Peter was stronger;  
5\. He slept with a stuffed unicorn, but always winked whenever he talked about sleeping with it and Peter had vowed to never go look for or touch that unicorn;  
6\. He claimed to never cry, “except when Mufasa dies”;  
7\. He couldn’t stand up, bend over and touch his toes;  
8\. He could, however, just stand up and bend over, and his thighs looked really nice when he did;  
9\. He always, _always_ did his best to cheer up and soothe the victimized kids they encountered before the police would come around;  
10\. He once rescued a kitten from a tree and refused to let go of it for the rest of the night, also refused to place it in a shelter, and had Peter put on an ad on his Facebook account to find it a new owner - “because I don’t have Facebook, and I don’t trust those freaks on Craigslist, and you’re a student, right? There are a bunch of lesbians at every university, right? Give her to the lesbians, they’re kind”;  
11\. The one time Peter had been too late in a crisis in those six months, and he’d lost a baby to a fire, Wade sat down with him on a rooftop for three hours and held him until the tears stopped, all limbs wrapped around him like a safety blanket;  
12\. He couldn’t cook a proper dinner meal to save his life, but claimed to make excellent breakfast pancakes;  
13\. For all his flirty comments and casual touches, he definitely wasn’t interested in Peter Parker in _that_ way.

And that last thing was a problem, because as Peter starfished on his bed in his shared dorm, Ned snoring happily away on the other side of the room, notepad on his chest, it was starting to become awkwardly clear how interested _he_ was in _Wade._

How it had happened, he had no idea. What it exactly was about him, he also didn’t have a clue. He just knew that he liked him. Liked-liked, the way he’d liked Liz as a freshman, but worse. Waaaaay worse, to the point where he’d almost crashed into a building tonight because Wade had been on his back, jokingly nuzzled the back of his neck, and had said: “Oh, baby, I wanna steal you away and get a Deadpool, Spidey, Unicorn sandwich going.”

Which was the stupidest thing Peter had ever heard, and he _couldn’t stop thinking about it._

Which didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. He’d get over this, definitely. He’d get over Wade.

How hard could that be?

\-----

He had promised himself to keep his cool the next time he’d see him. Nothing had changed, after all. If his heart was beating a little harder in anticipation as he waited for him on their usual spot, then that was all.

And then Wade showed up, and all that went out the window.

Oh, God.

“Hiya, baby boy!” he said cheerfully, as he came around the corner of the building, seemingly sewing up a cut in his suit on his arm. His muscular, amazingly built arm. “Sorry I’m late, I ran into a knife.”

Peter laughed. Nervously. And a little too loud.

_Come on, Parker._

“I mean,” he corrected himself, “that sounds pretty awful.”

Wade waved it off with his hurt arm/hand, which flapped around pretty uselessly. “It was nothing. Got a good laugh out of you, anyway, right? So hashtag worth it.”

He struggled with his sleeve for a few moments longer, apparently stabbing himself with the needle a couple of times, before finally letting out a frustrated grunt, and kicking the wall, hard.

Now his foot was all floppy too.

“Want some help?” Peter offered lamely, as Wade hopped over to him.

“Pretty please?” 

Wade handed him the needle and thread, using his good hand to lean heavily against Peter. His arm was pressing pretty harshly against his collar bone; Peter’s stomach still had the audacity to flip and freak out about that.

_Wadewastouchinghimwadewastouchinghimwadewastouchinghim._

Which was stupid, to be so hyper about that, because Wade was constantly touching him. He was always touching him. It meant nothing, he was just sewing up a cut in a suit and Wade had a broken foot and he needed some support.

That was all.

No need to get freaked out about the warmth of his breath against the side of his neck, through both their masks. It was just Wade.

“Don’t look at the stuff underneath,” he said suddenly. “Trust me, you don’t want to. It’s gross.”

Peter felt himself blush bright red at the idea of _the stuff underneath_ Wade’s suit, and it definitely wasn’t because he thought it would be gross. “It’s fine,” he said quickly. 

“Ha ha,” Wade said, not laughed, “trust me, baby boy, your pretty Bambi eyes might melt on sight.”

“I know you’re scarred, you already told me,” Peter brushed it off, as he sewed up the last few loops to make sure the whole thing wouldn’t rip apart again. “It’s no big deal. Besides, you don’t know if I have Bambi eyes, you’ve never seen them.”

As Wade inspected his arm, it seemed his wrist was okay again. “I don’t have to see them to know that they’re sparkly and big and cute, I can tell from your voice.”

“Then I guess I can tell from your voice that you look fine underneath your suit,” Peter retorted, before his inner filter could tell him _hey, uh, maybe don’t?_

They were both quiet for a long time after that, and Peter felt his stomach drop a mile deeper with every passing, silent second.

“You should sleep more,” was all Wade said, by the time Peter’s stomach was well on its way to China. “Students and their weird biorhythms. Makes them say all sorts’a shit.” Then, he cleared his throat, and gently tested out his foot again. It seemed fine; he stepped away.

Peter missed his closeness already.

“Ready to go?”

They went, and didn’t talk about it again.

\-----

It was six days later when some mafia butthead showed up, and Peter decided that they should hold a good old-fashioned stakeout. After all, this was a pretty important butthead; one of the leader buttheads of a much bigger criminal organisation that had been a pain in Peter’s butt (and head) for ages.

“Stakeout!” Wade actually clapped his hands at the idea. “Are we hiring a van? Should we order pizza? Please tell me you’ve got those cool binoculars and everything, it’s not a real stakeout without those. Oh, and maybe -”

“Wade,” Peter interrupted him, before he would get too loud, “we’re just going to sit on that rooftop over there and watch him.”

Wade’s whole body language went from hyped to slumped as he looked at the rooftop Peter was pointing at. “Just… sitting?”

“Just sitting.”

He actually _whined._ “Like, sitting _still?_ ”

Peter frowned a bit. “You never have to do that when you’re doing your whole mercenary business?”

Wade shrugged. “I can sit still for pay.”

The sentence was out before Peter could help it. “Can you sit still for me?”

Peter felt his stomach freeze the moment the words left his mouth - actually, everything froze for a moment, including Wade. A long moment, actually. One of those ‘dear god when does it stop’ moments.

And then Wade shrugged. “Fine, but you owe me.”

It was as if he’d personally stuck a friendly flame in Peter’s stomach, because all his anxiety slowly ebbed away, leaving such a sense of relief that he didn’t even remember to protest Wade’s bargaining. “Sure, whatever you say.”

\-----

Turned out that Wade was horrible at stakeouts.

He should’ve seen that coming, really. Wade was exceptionally bad at staying still. He needed to be kept busy, have some kind of stimulation going, or he got antsy within two seconds.

“How do you do that on the job, then?” Peter finally asked, as Wade rubbed his foot on the concrete rooftop so hard that little stones started getting loose. “You can’t make this much noise on a stakeout, come on.”

But Wade just shrugged, grabbed some of the little stones, and flicked them at Peter’s leg. “Earbuds. Music helps me focus.”

Peter lay down on his stomach and leaned his head on his hands, peering off the ledge of the roof. Still nothing. “So hum to yourself? Just not too loudly.”

“Don’t hum if you’re not going to commit to loud parts.” Wade flopped down next to him, and Peter felt his adrenaline spike already - but that was nothing compared to the deep flush that spread over his face when Wade scooted over, to press his whole side against Peter’s. 

_Ohmygod._

“Truth or dare?”

But Peter’s brain was not available right now, leave a message at the beep, so his initial reply was just “uhhh…”, right up to the point where his words really sank in. “I mean, no, no, we can’t do that.”

He could practically sense Wade’s pout. “Why not?”

“Because we’re supposed to sit still and be quiet! We can’t do dares.”

Wade shrugged and gently elbowed him. “Then let’s just do truths! Lay all our dirty little secrets out on the table.”

Oh, God. Well, that was just a terrible plan. “I don’t know if I -”

“I know, I know.” Wade sighed dramatically. “So we’ll just do all our dirty secrets, minus your identity? How does that sound?”

Oh, right. The identity thing. That was the bigger issue here, obviously. It wasn’t the crush thing, not at all.

Well. He could just avoid both. “Sure, okay, give me your worst.”

Wade quietly clapped his hands together. “Oh, this is great. Truth or dare?”

“I thought we were just doing truths.” 

“And quiet, sitting still dares,” Wade said airily, and before Peter could really react to what those dares could entail (besides prank texting people, or activities with their masks up, but then again, Wade wouldn’t want that - or maybe he would? Oh, God, what if he did?), he went on: “Come on, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Peter replied immediately (cowardly).

Not that it seemed to matter, because Wade had his question ready. “Did your dick change after you got bit by that spider?”

Uhhh. “What the fuck?”

Wade faux-gasped. “You said fuck.”

“That’s not a normal question!”

“But you have to tell the truth,” Wade protested. “Tis the rules.”

Peter didn’t even know where to start with his speech on boundaries and how friendship worked. Mostly because, well, what kind of hypocrite would he be? He wasn’t going to voice it (ever), but ever since hearing about Wade’s skin, he’d been wondering if he’d really be scarred… everywhere. Curiosity was normal.

But see, the thing was that he was curious for very selfish, embarrassing reasons, and that Wade’s curiosity seemed to be coming out of nowhere. Except maybe just a complete lack of social boundaries. It was different.

“God, did it change that much?!” Wade whispered, shocked. “Yes or no would suffice, baby boy, relax, no need to get all frozen up.”

Peter blinked once, twice, before his attention shifted from Wade’s dick back to his own, and he physically had to shake his head to get himself out of the whole dick thought pattern altogether. “No,” he finally said. “No, it’s… it still looks the same.”

“Looks the same, huh?” There was something teasing to Wade’s voice. “Does it work differently, then?” Then he gasped. “Do you _cum webs?_ ”

Peter made a face under his mask, before looking back at the unmoved building across from them. “Gross! And you can’t ask me that, it’s not your turn anymore.”

Wade hmpfed, before wiggling a bit against Peter’s side. “Fine, but I choose dare.”

Well, that one was easy, because Peter very strictly did not allow his mind to wander into That Direction, so there was only one quiet, sitting still dare he could think of. “I dare you to be completely silent for five minutes.”

The whine that Wade let out was almost inhuman. And way too loud. “You’re kidding!”

Peter automatically webbed his mouth, even though he knew (from experience) that it would do nothing to actually shut him up. “Shh! Stakeout, remember!”

“Sorry,” Wade whispered back, “but I can’t shut up for five minutes, that’s insanely long. Also, I’m very hurt and offended that you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“But you still have to do it.” Peter even grinned a little under his mask. “Tis the rules, Wade.”

Wade didn’t reply. In fact, he didn’t reply for so long, that Peter got worried after about thirty seconds - before realising that he was Doing The Thing.

“Doing great, bud,” he praised him, and whoah, it was a lot less intimidating to be saying stuff like that while knowing that Wade couldn’t say anything back. “I’m very proud of you.”

Wade looked at his Hello Kitty watch, then just put his head on Peter’s shoulder.

It was kind of sweet, actually. Of course Peter’s whole soul was doing somersaults at the contact, but even from a non crush point of view, it was probably a pretty sweet gesture to receive.

“And it’s not like I don’t like hearing you talk,” he went on. “I do. It’s nice. I don’t want you to suddenly feel insecure, or anything, I appreciate what you have to say - but isn’t it also kind of nice to take a pause, sometimes?”

Wade didn’t respond for maybe two seconds, before shaking his head against Peter’s shoulder.

“Oh.” Okay, then. “Is it because you keep thinking of things to say and it’s frustrating you can’t say them out loud?”

Wade shrugged, then shook his head.

“Is it because you don’t like it when I talk?”

Wade shook his head so hard that Peter was afraid it’d fall off, then leaned in and pressed his masked mouth against Peter’s masked cheek.

Peter actually felt his breath hitch at that, and his face was uncomfortably hot.

“Thanks,” he just managed to say. “That’s sweet.”

Another minute of silence, without anything happening in the building in front of them, but Wade started to squirm more and more, before starting to rub at his mask, finally almost clawing at it.

Oh.

“You don’t like silence because your thoughts are bad,” Peter concluded, because he’d seen such a reaction before. Not on Wade, not to silence, but on several of his classmates, as a reaction to _noise_. Those had all just been people with a hypersensitivity to noise, but it wouldn’t surprise Peter in the slightest if Wade was someone who suffered from intrusive thoughts, or something.

Wade dropped his head in his hands, and Peter resisted the urge to reach over and pat his back. He’d just take it as pity, probably. (Some part of it would also be pity, probably.) “You can talk, if you want to. Don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

But Wade just tapped on his Hello Kitty watch.

“Right. Tis the rules.”

That got him a firm thumbs up. Well. Then it was just up to him to fill the silence, right?

“I ordered a pizza like two weeks ago, did I tell you that story?” He didn’t pause to check. “It was supposed to be just a pepperoni pizza, because pepperoni is the best, honestly. And it’s the simplest pizza, I’d say, besides margarita, maybe? It’s the most popular pizza, at least. It’s the pizza in all the commercials. So my friend and I, we order a large pizza to share, because it’s cheaper than two normal sized pizzas, and we’re not really that rich or anything, so that was what we did. And I was so hyped for the pizza. I could almost taste it. Perfect cheese, perfect sauce, perfect pepperoni, everything - and then it arrived, and you’re not going to believe what happened next.”

When Peter looked over, though, Wade was typing away on his phone.

Rude.

At least, he thought it was, until Wade showed him what he’d typed:

_u sound like a clickbait article_

_also WHAT HAPPENED NEXT????_

“I’d argue that’s cheating,” Peter said gently, but that wasn’t the point right now, anyway. “So, the pizza guy comes, we’re happy, we’re super happy actually - and hungry, and we open the box, and... there’s no pepperoni!”

Wade gasped, rather loudly.

“I know, right?” Peter went on. “I cried a little.”

Wade placed his head on his shoulder again in sympathy. Oh so carefully, Peter allowed himself to lean back a little, to let the shared heat of their bodies soak through their suits, allowed himself to enjoy the moment a little longer than he probably should have.

“Thanks,” he mumbled. “You’re a real friend. It was a tragic loss.”

And they just stayed like that, quietly, pressed against each other and staring at an unmoving building, for God knew how long.

By the time Peter peeked at Wade’s watch again, he saw that half an hour had passed; when he pointed it out, Wade just shrugged.

“Thought that maybe if I kept my mouth shut for long enough, you’d start talking again,” he admitted, his voice a little rough from disuse.

That comment alone was enough to stun Peter into silence for another good minute. 

“I also have a pizza story, though,” Wade finally continued, and the rest of their uneventful stakeout was filled with nonsense stories, just two friends lying side to side, talking about nothing until the sun came up.

\-----

On the second stakeout they had, Wade showed up with pizza.

“Pepperoni pizza,” he said enthusiastically. “A large one to share!”

Peter’s stomach was instantly filled with butterflies, and paradoxically felt very empty at the same time. “You’re perfect.”

Wade looked extremely self satisfied as he put the box down and flopped down next to it. “I know, right?”

There was just one problem. “But, uh, masks?”

Wade shrugged. “I won’t look at yours if you don’t look at mine.”

So Peter sat down on the other side of the box, turned his head away, and pulled his mask up to his nose. It felt a little bit naked, but he trusted Wade; even if he did peek, he was sure that half a face wasn’t going to get him compromised.

It was only once Peter had eaten like half the pizza, that he dared to peek in Wade’s direction, and noticed that his mask was still fully on.

“I’m gonna eat the whole thing if you don’t hurry,” he warned him. “I promised I won’t peek, come on.”

But Wade just intentionally looked away from him as he held his thumbs up. “That’s cool! I changed my mind anyway, so eat away.”

“Oh, come on, you bought it.”

“Spidey, I mean it,” Wade pressed on. “Let it go, eat the pizza.”

“Is this because of your skin?” Peter guessed. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Wade laughed humorlessly. “You’d never be able to look at pepperoni the same way again. Trust me, it’s better like this. Just eat the pizza and be happy, baby boy. I don’t want to talk about this. Please stop pushing.”

So Peter ate the pizza, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do the ‘be happy’ part anymore.

\-----

Peter mostly managed to hold his cool for about two months after that. Because he was a grown man, you know? At least sort of. He was twenty, that was grown man enough to not pine after Wade like a total teenager, he decided. So he declared himself Totally Over Him.

But then Wade did God knew what (he refused to say), got kicked out of the House Of Old White Men, ran out of stupid money pretty soon, and had to take a stupid job abroad, for God knew how long.

Things went sideways real quick after that.

The first two lonesome nights of patrol went by painfully slow, but at least things went mostly okay. He had forgotten how lonely it was to spend the whole night alone like that; before Wade had showed up, all “hey, a bunch of old white men decided I can’t live in their stupid house unless I do some good shit, and my old roommate kicked me out for stealing her coke so I can’t go back there, and you’re like the _best_ at doing good shit, so can I tag along? You can pick the music!”, patrol had been pretty quiet. 

And now he was so used to the constant noise coming from Wade, that the silence was even more deafening than it ever had been.

Then the third Wadeless night came around, and Peter blamed it on the lack of background noise to keep him focused that that stupid mafia leader he’d been tailing for _months_ now, had actually gotten to him. Not badly, but his buddies had still managed to get a few good punches in before he could web them to the nearest wall.

So that was how he ended up sitting on the roof of a cheap hotel, with a bag of ice that he’d had to ask for at the reception (and that the receptionist had only given to him after Peter had taken a selfie with her, all bruised up and everything - not that she could’ve seen that through the suit, but she could’ve guessed, right? Why else would he need ice?), and his mask balled up in his hand, watching as the sun rose over the city again.

It was one of the prettiest sunsets he had ever seen in his time as Spider-Man, and his chest still ached. Not from the punches, either.

_Hey, how is the job going?_

Text sent.

His traitor of a hopeful heart kept beating anxiously fast for ten minutes straight as he stared at his phone, hoping for a reply. Nothing came.

Until half an hour later, when he got a masked selfie of Wade holding up a peace signal, and a decapitated head.

Peter threw up a little in his mouth.

_You can’t send people pictures like that! :(_

This time, the reply was instantaneous.

_this is jackson. jackson is a naughty boy. jackson did bad things to good people, and wasnt using his head for years on end, so we decided he doesnt need it_

Peter tried to frown, but his eye was _so sore_ , wow.

_Who is we?_

This time, a picture came in of Wade, still masked, next to a smiling, _gorgeous_ young woman, with several nose rings and sparkling brown Bambi eyes. The real Bambi eyes. 

Peter’s heart sank.

_this is dhara, a cool survivor and she found out i was hired to kill the douchenozzle and went like omg what a coincidence!! i also want to kill the douchenozzle!!!!!! and i was like are u sure because once youve killed you can never go back to not being a killer, and she was like who says ive never killed someone and stabbed me and i thought it was so impressive that i gave her my katanas and let her finish him_

Then, two seconds later:

_not gonna lie it was so cool i want her to have my babies_

_were having drinks now and shes drinking me under the table_

Then another selfie, of Wade with his mask pulled up to his nose, holding up a bottle of God knew what, with Dhara kissing his cheek.

His unmasked cheek.

Peter turned off his phone as quickly as he could, before that horribly sick feeling in his stomach got any worse. Instead, he just watched himself in the black mirror of his screen. Bruised up, ice pressed to his jaw, his left eye so swollen that it looked like he was 100% eyelid on his left side.

The crying hurt even worse than just being bruised up, but his non-Bambi eyes couldn’t help but keep producing tears anyway.

\-----

Peter didn’t show up for his lectures the following day. Or leave his bed at all, actually, which was so unlike him, that by the time Ned came back to their dorm at the end of the day, he actually came in with a box of tissues, three apples, and a hot water bottle.

“Hey, Pete? You okay?” he asked, gently, almost carefully - like Peter was going to instantaneously die if he spoke too loudly.

Maybe he would, though. He’d pretty much felt on the brink of death for the whole morning, which was so _stupid_ , because there was honestly no reason why he had to take this so personally.

Dhara was very pretty, and _Wade wasn’t interested in him anyway_ , he knew that, so why was he still so upset about it?

“Do you have, like, a fever or something?” asked Ned, as he sat cross-legged next to Peter’s bed. A weirdly sticky, warm hand was suddenly pressed against Peter’s forehead.

“Gross,” he groaned. “What have you been touching?’

“Oh, that.” Ned wiped his hand on his pants. “I helped MJ with this art project thingy, she’s making the house from _Up_ in paper mache. Can’t get the glue off, though.”

Peter turned around to watch him stick his thumb and forefinger together and pull them apart for a few times, before Ned suddenly paused.

“Whoah, dude, what happened to your face? Are you okay?!”

Peter had to poke himself right in the black eye before remembering that detail of the night before. “Oh, right, some people punched me. It’s okay, though, I got them down. Should heal within a few days. Tell me about the, uh. What? Whatever MJ was doing. And what are the apples for?”

Ned looked at the stuff next to him. “Oh, that.” He placed one of the apples on Peter’s pillow, in front of his face. “Made you a care package, since you were feeling bad, and all.”

Peter smiled, despite the complaints of his facial muscles. “Thanks, man.”

“So wanna tell me what’s going on?”

For a moment, Peter hesitated, before he slowly grabbed the apple and cradled it to his chest. Apple could be his unicorn, for now. “She’s really pretty,” he whined, and wow, that came out a lot more pathetic than he intended.

Ned frowned a little. “Who?”

So Peter showed him the pictures on his phone, and the texts, and when that got Ned even more confused (“but you didn’t know her, right? Are you jealous because the new X-Men guy is hanging out with a pretty girl that you don’t know?”) he muffled a bunch of whiny noises in his pillow, before finally spilling the beans.

“I really like Wade.”

The way the realisation dawned on Ned was almost comical.

“Ohhh.”

“And even when we have food together, he doesn’t eat it, you know? He doesn’t even let me see a little bit of his face, and he just drinks with her like that? He let her kiss his cheek! He said he wanted her to have his babies, like - she doesn’t even _know_ him, she doesn’t even know he doesn’t like boiled vegetables! She has no idea!”

Ned nodded empathetically. “That’s terrible,” he said, understandingly, without understanding any of that at all.

“I wish I could just turn it off,” Peter muttered. “Ctrl+alt+del, force stop feelings.exe.”

“Nice one,” said Ned, in the same sad/empathetic voice as before.

“I don’t wanna go on patrol tonight.”

“Then don’t go.”

“Then people will die, probably.”

They were both quiet for a little while.

“That would also be bad,” Ned finally concluded. 

“I should probably just eat my apples and suck it up, huh?”

Ned shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, yeah.”

So, ignoring his anxiety induced, rapidly beating heart, Peter curled a little further around his apple, groaned some more into his pillow, and sucked it up.

\-----

He did go on patrol that night.

It was… _strange_.

See, the thing was, the more Peter fished for details about what happened last night, the weirder Wade started to behave. Instead of just admitting he slept with Dhara (which was all Peter wanted to know/ _really didn’t_ want to know), he just said things like “oh, we had _such_ a fun time”, and “she’s so _great_ , Spides, you’d really like her”.

Which, honestly? Was worse than hearing about the two of them having sex.

So he stopped asking. Actually, he stopped talking to him altogether, just tuning Wade out in case he was talking about his perfect Indian goddess again, up to a point where a bullet grazed Peter’s neck, and Wade suddenly slammed him against a wall.

“What the fuck is going on?” he hissed.

“Ow,” said Peter, referring both to where the bullet had burned his skin and the way Wade was crushing his chest. “Wade, ow.”

“I warned you that you were getting shot at like seven times, you asshole, what the fuck were you thinking?”

He was really close now, their foreheads pressed roughly together, and it suddenly became awkwardly clear how short Peter really was. Stupid genes.

“I wasn’t listening,” he admitted.

Stupidly.

Because if he thought the crushing pressure on his chest was bad before, then oh boy, it was _hellish_ now. He was pretty sure Wade could snap his ribs if he pressed any harder. “When I was telling you your life was in danger? Why the fuck wouldn’t you listen to that?”

But even now, even facing that really dangerous side of Wade that Peter wasn’t too fond of, he couldn’t bring himself to be scared. Because this was _Wade_. This was the Wade that had refused to let go of a kitten the size of his hand until he had found her “the perfect lesbians”. This was the Wade that had a deck of cards in one of his pouches at all times, so that he could intentionally mess up a card trick for stressed out or traumatized kids, to make them laugh and keep them entertained until the police would show up.

Wade wasn’t going to hurt him, even if he very clearly could.

“Just didn’t want to listen to your Dhara stories anymore,” he admitted. “I get it, she’s great.”

Wade tsked. “You were the one that kept asking for the Dhara stories!”

“And then I stopped, because I didn’t want to know after all!”

“Then could you at least listen to the _warnings about fucking bullets?_ ”

His ribs really hurt now, though. “You’re crushing me,” he squeaked out. “Hurts.”

“You know what hurts?!” Wade was shouting now. Oh, that wasn’t good. “Dying! Dying hurts, _trust me_ , it sucks fucking ass!”

Peter couldn’t breathe. His throat was too closed up, and his ribcage was too squashed. “msorry,” he choked. “Wade -”

Wade let go of him so abruptly that the gross, gurgling sound of air rushing into Peter’s lungs filled the whole alley. 

“That was stupid,” Wade scolded him. Wade. Wade Wilson. Was scolding _him_.

Okay, so he’d really fucked up, then. “I know, I know, I should pay better attention, I was just distracted -”

“She wasn’t supposed to distract!” Wade kicked a wall, once again breaking his ankle, and let out a long string of curse words at the impact. “Fucking fuck shit - Jesus, she was just supposed to make you jealous! _I_ was trying to make you - _ow_.”

Peter’s whole chest ached, and he couldn’t really tell if it was because of his squashed ribs, or because of what Wade was saying. “Jealous?”

“You know, that feeling where you go ‘wait, no, I don’t want her to have Wade’s babies! I didn’t see it before, but now I totally want Wade’s dick!’ and then I’d swoop in and charm your pants off and we could have awesome spider babies together, and everything would work out great, and this method always works in the movies!”

Oh.

_Oh._

Peter’s mouth ran dry. His whole throat ran dry, his hands were sweaty, his head was spinning.

Wade wanted to have awesome spider babies together. _Wade wanted him._ Honestly, he was pretty sure his legs were shaking.

“Are you going to throw up?” Wade suddenly said. “Don’t do it in your mask, might get in your eyes.”

So Peter lifted his mask with trembling fingers, almost automatically, up to his nose. Wade abruptly turned around.

Ten seconds of frozen silence, before Wade broke it again, still turned away. “Is it coming yet? The puke?”

“Why did you show her your face?” Peter finally managed to ask. “You never showed me your face.”

“Because it’s gross,” came the automatic reply. “You’ve seen it on the pic, right? It’s bad.”

“It’s not,” Peter immediately waved it off. “Not as bad as you seem to think it is, at least. I like your lips.”

Wade huffed a laugh. It didn’t sound very genuine.

“What was so special about her that she got to see it?”

“She wasn’t,” Wade simply said. “And it’s not like I would rather _die_ than show it to you or any of that dramatic crap - eventually I would, you know? But Jesus, Spidey, _I like you._ I like you so much, and you’re so kind, like all the fucking time - it’s almost nauseating, you know? I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Now it was Peter’s turn to laugh humorlessly. “That’s a stupid reason. I like you too, a face is just a face. You can look at mine, if you want.”

“You don’t like me, you just think I’m okay to hang out with, or -”

“I like you. Just look at my face, c’mon, please.”

Slowly, Wade turned around - with his hands in front of his lenses, though. “You sure? Can’t unsee what has been seen.”

“It’s just my mouth and nose, we’re good. Not really a full identity thing.”

So Wade looked at him, and though he wasn’t sure _what_ exactly shifted with that, the whole situation felt a lot less tense once he did.

They both just… deflated, a little bit.

“Hey, Wade?” Peter quietly nudged. “Truth or dare?”

Wade frowned a little. “What?”

“Please pick dare,” Peter added.

“Dare.”

“Kiss me?” Peter dared/asked/begged. 

“Ha ha,” Wade said, not laughed. “Spides, come on, you don’t want -”

But Peter held up a finger and cleared his throat. “Tis the rules,” he said nervously. “I mean, unless you don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to.”

“I do. Tis the rules, Wade. Please?”

Wade hesitated for about half a minute, before slowly making his way over to the other side of the alley, peeling his mask up, and finally, _finally_ , pressing his lips to Peter’s so quickly that he barely felt it.

_4\. He was taller than Peter, but Peter was stronger._

So before he could scurry off to the other side of the alley again, Peter wrapped his arms around Wade’s neck, pulled himself up, and kissed back. 

And kissed back.

And kissed back, until Wade _finally_ got the memo and responded with so much enthusiasm and fever, that all of Peter’s face bruises hurt at once. Didn’t matter, though, because _Wade was kissing him._

“Bet that Dhara doesn’t even know you don’t like boiled vegetables,” Peter gasped in between kisses, cheeks flushed, brain fuzzy.

Wade laughed, genuinely now, and Peter felt like he was floating. “That’s such a weird thing to say right now.”

“‘m just happy,” Peter waved it off. “Kiss me?”

And Wade did.


End file.
